In short, she’s about as close to perfect as I feel I could hope to get, except that she’s not at all open to listening to any new ideas, such as homeschooling.

An even bigger red flag than the homeschooling question is her view on sex in marriage:

I said that I am taking a massive risk by marrying and having children with her. And that I was afraid of having a sexless marriage. She doesn’t see sex as a wifely duty. She didn’t wanna hear it and simply shut down conversation.

Vox offered LS sound advice:

This is not a hard question to answer, but it is perhaps a hard answer to hear. Never marry a woman who does not see sex as part of her marital duties, because she is a woman who does not believe a woman has any marital duties. Sex is the single most important aspect of a marriage, indeed, it can even be theologically argued that sex is marriage.

This woman is already telling LS that she will not accept him as the head of the household, will not put the academic interests of her children ahead of herself, and will only have sex with him when she happens to feel like it. I would be astonished if LS managed to stay married to her for four years, if he is sufficiently unwise as to propose to her.

A number of the commenters were critical of LS’s approach in asking her these questions in the way he did. They felt that instead he should have gamed her into agreement. Joseph Dantes kicked this off:

It’s so much easier to silently lead a woman in the desired direction than to logically pre-approve your course of action.

That’s why I’m tempted to suggest that the guy above simply take from and give to her exactly what he likes without asking first.

Based on the way LS phrases this, he’s already off on the wrong foot in this relationship…hes playing into her frame, rather than establishing his own frame and inviting her to join him.

He’s asking her if she’d meet some goal of his…which puts her in the drivers seat; the de facto power holder.

He’s asking her if she’s willing to meet his standards, instead of clearly telling her what his standards are and what the consequences are if they are not met.

Both are probably right from a game perspective. However, I disagree that LS should be using game to achieve compliance from his prospective wife. What he needs to learn are her core values regarding marriage. The last thing he should be doing at this point is feeding her the right answers. If she doesn’t start off with the right view of marriage, Vox is right that their marriage is almost certainly doomed. As I wrote previously in Gaming your wife:

The foundation for her commitment to your marriage shouldn’t be your game. If she is only one, or a few, or even 50 failed shit tests away from walking away from her sacred vow and/or whoring around, then she isn’t a wife, she is a whore. Don’t marry a whore*. Game should be about making you and your wife happier with your marriage, not about putting the sole onus for the success of the marriage on you.

During the screening process for a wife I would say that too much game could actually be a great risk for a man. If she has all of the right answers simply because she is under your spell, this means she doesn’t really have the right core values. Or maybe she does, but you won’t be able to spot which is which. Keep in mind that it is a man’s sacred duty to his future children to do whatever he can to ensure that they grow up with the benefit of an in tact family with a mother and father. He owes them the best mother he can find. If she only has the right answers because she was following her tingle, he has failed miserably.

Note: My wife took a quick look at this and said She sounds like the kind who would declare “I’m not haaaapy!” and divorce in a few years.

28 Responses to Should you game your prospective wife into submission?

My short answer is that this woman would require too much game to keep “happy,” and is thus way too high-maintenance to keep. The moment your game slips you’d be done. She’s unfit for the institution of marriage.

“If she has all of the right answers simply because she is under your spell, this means she doesn’t really have the right core values. ”

This is why I play the “qualifying” angle very softly in my relationships. I want to see her operate as she is, not as she tries to play to my standards. I don’t want her to want me so bad she’ll say anything she has to to keep me, under the duress of a hormonal infatuation that may eventually end and the real challenge of commitment begins. However, that has to be traded off against the articulation of leadership that is core to game itself, so I can’t be a silent statue all the time.

My ex had no opinions on core values, so I led her in to my values, and it worked until she reconnected with her feminist mother.

A divorced 50+ woman who treated her husband like crap for decades before he had enough, a typical American princess daughter, a drug addled incredible effeminate gay son, and my ex who didn’t have any real opinions of her own.

That led to my ex turning nasty in an incredibly short period of time. Suddenly she went from sweet and caring to violent and bitchy, from someone who wanted a family to someone who had an abortion behind my back, and started calling our verbal arguments “abuse” but believing that her hitting me was perfectly acceptable.

Basically, if your prospective mate’s core values are so mutable that they can be changed with game they are also weak enough that they can be changed by other external forces.

I think I’ll hold off on marriage until I find a woman with compatible values and goals. Creatures without a will and mind of their own are good for nothing more than a pump and dump.

The only positive thing I can say about the whole experience was I got a beautiful daughter out of it, even if my son didn’t make it, and that same mutability led to an agreeable parenting plan signed during private mediation after her mother convinced her to take me to court for custody.

You don’t even need that much game to get an infatuated woman to ‘agree’ with you on politics or religion. The same goes for these sorts of life values. You need to find out what her base set point is, and see if that corresponds to what you want – because she’ll eventually return to it.

Game never works on Anglobitches; they want inferior men and either will try to denigrate a strong one or slut around with a weak one. The best solution is to keep away from them, or pursue real women from other cultures who don’t need to be ‘gamed’.

I guess the whole “game” thing works OK if you’re after a fling…but somebody you have to manipulate that way to bring them around to your point of view isn’t going to be somebody you can trust in the long term.

Morghan,
Your prospective wife’s mother is VERY important in your choice of wife. Long term, the way to bet is you’ll be treated like her mother treats her father. It’s the reference class for all of her male-female relationships and while it can sometimes be overcome, that’s not the way to bet. Look for a woman whose mother treats her father respectfully.

This is the most logical argument I’ve heard against game in the manosphere. I had been thinking this way since I first heard about game, but could not find the words to articulate those thoughts. Great post, and succintly summarizes why game is no substitute for genuine and honest foundations when it comes to marriage.

Personally, I don’t find marriage game any more exhausting than, say, brushing my teeth every evening. Once the knowledge is internalized, it’s like riding a bike or doing addition in one’s head. Once you’ve learned game, it’s a way of seeing that just can’t be put down. (How do you ignore the truth once you’ve seen it?) In fact, just the opposite is true: an LTR without game is–in the long run–far more exhausting than one with.

That said, some women have values, ambitions, or even neuroses that are antithetical to a stable marriage. Marriage game isn’t meant for such a crowd. Marriage game is a tool to make fundamentally marriageable women more happy in marriage–but such women first need to be within the realm of marriageable! Perhaps Vox Day’s OP has discovered just such a beast and he’s simply slow to clue in.

Indeed, the OP’s comment that, “she’s about as close to perfect as I feel I could hope to get” speaks volumes. Clearly, she’s far from “close to perfect” marriage-wise. The OP has said as much. Furthermore, if this is all he “could hope to get”, he sounds like he suspects the truth but is simply wishing it weren’t so. I suspect the poor guy is pussy-blinded and can’t see his way through to reality.

Hope – “This is the most logical argument I’ve heard against game in the manosphere.”

I take it your referring to the point about: ”During the screening process for a wife I would say that too much game could actually be a great risk for a man.”?

I don’t get that it makes an argument against Game, but merely suggests that if one has relied on a bit of Game to attract a woman’s interests, the interest it has generated in her might persuade her to be dishonest as to her true desires. However, to have not relied on that bit of Game in the first place would likely have resulted in her not having become interested (“no Game = no girl”, not “no Game = sincere girl”).

The answer is not to jettison Game, but rather to employ some subterfuge to test if her answers are designed to appeal to the man (or, more precisely, what he has given her the impression that he would prefer). Sort of a version of a “Sh*t-test”, if you will.

If a man wished to find a woman who would be a good wife and mother, but has reason to believe that the women he is considering might simply be looking to agree so as to further a relationship; he could simply make remarks to suggest that he is not as interested in starting a family (for instance), and then ask her about her feelings on the subject. [not so much as to indicate that he is against marriage and children, but enough to leave some doubt about his desires]

A women who was sincere about starting a family would be likely to stick to her guns, and indicate the importance of these to her. However, a woman who was not sincere would be more likely to either be evasive about her feelings about it (not being able to be certain of his position) or to express her own disinterest.

In the latter case, either way, whether she is being sincere in her lack of desire, or if she is simply answering as she believes he wishes her to, he can effectively rule her out. Conversely, a woman who has been forthright with him despite his seeming lack of desire will have demonstrated (quite clearly) that she is a much better candidate.

Or, if you were referring to this point: ” The foundation for her commitment to your marriage shouldn’t be your game.”

That seems like more an argument against marriage than one against Game.

In most relationships a man is in a better position if he does have some Game. The problem is that some women (probably most modern women, given the pervasiveness of the feminist infection), will be constantly pushing the envelope, so to speak, requiring their man to always be on top of his Game (to respond to her pushes and sh*t-tests) lest she lose respect for him and find a way to rationalize subsequent bad behaviors.

With such a woman, the choice to not employ Game will not make the relationship better – it will only allow it to collapse faster. Thus, pointing out that Game cannot save every relationship, or that Game will be constantly required in a relationship, simply cannot stand as a good argument against Game, as it is really a much better argument against getting married to a woman who will be such a challenge (as to require constant Game).

MNL – “Personally, I don’t find marriage game any more exhausting than, say, brushing my teeth every evening. Once the knowledge is internalized, it’s like riding a bike or doing addition in one’s head. Once you’ve learned game, it’s a way of seeing that just can’t be put down.”

So true! But, I think a lot of people still don’t have a very good grasp on what “Game” is, seeing it as some serious of tricks that a man would play on a woman. Game is much more the internalized sense of confidence in ones self and ones abilities, (naturally) leading to the outward expression of that confidence. It doesn’t lend itself to easy definition, but it is so much more than a bunch of little tricks played on women (as I think some people believe).

@slwerner, my comment was to Dalrock for this post in general. He clearly and succintly articulated those thoughts, particularly the parts he highlighted. What you and MNL talked about constitute “inner game,” which is different.

If she “shuts down” during a conversation she disagrees with and doesn’t seem to care about her potential future husband’s happiness, then what does that say? Can he game her into changing herself on such a fundamental level? Dalrock and others have assessed that the answer is no.

The course of action for LS, if he had “inner game,” would be to realize that women are a dime a dozen, and to walk away and find a more suitable woman who would give him the proper respect he deserves. Reading the post that it’s a black woman just makes the whole thing more puzzling. There are far fewer black men in the community to marry, and the competition between black women for a black man to marry is fierce (Vox points this out as well).

On the subject of game as the way to keep the woman “in line,” my husband said (when he learned about game in college), “If I get a girl through game, what’s to keep some other guy from gaming her away?” That’s a hell of a catch-22, isn’t it? PT Barnum also mentioned this in a comment above. Inner game doesn’t change the equation either, because there can always be some other man with more inner game. The solution is not more game, but to find a woman who genuinely loves him, and ideally who is self-aware enough to realize when she is starting to get attracted to someone else and pulls herself back to focus on the marriage.

Doug1Boiling it down, I think the right approach is to game her first and teach her what you expect of a worthy wife in marriage. This is novel stuff in the feminism propagandized age for most women.

This is a valid point. Explain expectations, expect compliance, correct misbehavior. This is a masculine way of being. I’m not referring to being a jerk, a boor, a tyrant, or any of the other nonsense labels that feminists throw at strong, independent, men, either. I’m referring to polite, but firm, insistence on certain behaviors. And this is indeed a novelty in the modern era, except in very rare cases.

That includes sex even when she isn’t feeling it, to keep her husband happy, and staying married until the kids are in college, even if she isn’t feeling totally “in love” after a bunch of years.

What you might mean is this: she should be focused on the marriage first, and everything else – job, children, relatives – afterwards. That includes regular sex except in certain situations (illness, etc.) but it also includes displaying respect for him, especially when she may not feel he deserves it. Because men need respect, just as women need love, in a long term relationship. Doing these things should reduce the danger of a divorce — and make no mistake, while waiting for the youngest child to be out of the house to divorce is not as rough on the children as doing it when they are under 10, it still has an effect. It still makes it just a little bit more difficult for those children to form their own LTR’s and pair-bond, because it introduces the doubts (for men) and the whispers (for women) into the back of their heads.

Then give all that a rest. But keep gaming her otherwise.
Then after a good while, skillfully elicit her own real opinion at that point in these areas. If the answers are still feminist ones, eject.

I spent two weeks delving into your blog. I unilaterally agreed with almost every post/point/blog entry that you made… until I saw this.

Never fail a shit test. Never bow down to it.

You fall into the mass of beta… “Don’t marry a whore…”

“My marriage is better than your marriage”

“My girl is better than your girl”

Thanks for the nice articles, I’ll not be reading again. You’ve fallen into the clever pussy trap, “NOT MY PUSSY,” so deal with it.

I know you won’t care, but my god, such a horrid intellectual position? And you defend it?

[D: One of you has to be responsible for her keeping her promise. I stand by my assessment that it shouldn’t be you. I’m not suggesting that husbands should fail shit tests, but that they should not fear them. Of course you should pass her shit tests, but not because you fear she will leave you or cheat on you if you don’t.]

“Based on the way LS phrases this, he’s already off on the wrong foot in this relationship…hes playing into her frame, rather than establishing his own frame and inviting her to join him.

He’s asking her if she’d meet some goal of his…which puts her in the drivers seat; the de facto power holder.

He’s asking her if she’s willing to meet his standards, instead of clearly telling her what his standards are and what the consequences are if they are not met”

Typical “I’ve GOT to stay in charge or she’ll dominate me” crap. It’s not your job to lead her or frame everything in the relationship; it’s the job of both people to see if their frames work for each other, not for one to make all the rules.

“Explain expectations, expect compliance, correct misbehavior”

More schlock. Yes, schoolmaster.

Slwerner and MNL, what you’re describing is MANHOOD, and should never be reduced to the label “game”. I wish that were always true, Mormon Man,